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Every day I check the mail box. Looking for one order from Gitty and one from a company in Thailand. The company inThailand sells really cheap capacitors, pots, boards, etc. However, it takes ten days or more to arrive. More usuallly. Gitty takes far less, it just seems like ten days since I am anxious. I am awaiting two sets of tuners. two sets of strings and twenty five grommits for strings.

Read an article today about tools needed to do a professional job of building CBGs. It was from someone who does this for a living. They listed real tools, band saws, drill presses, plainers, belt sanders, scroll saws, table saws, several sets of drills and a power screw driver, dramill tool, chisel set, rasps, files, and a lot more. They said a cheap set of these tools could be bought for around $1200 to $1500 and suggested one invest that just to get started.

Really?

Raise your hand if you can invest that much right now. Ok, a few of you have decent jobs, the rest of us are ordinary blue collar stiffs.

I've given up chex mix and chocolot, and ginger ale to support my weekly thirty something to forty dollar purchases.

My breakfast cereal bowl ends up in my shop, I moved my computer to my shop, and a dorm refridgerator. Beverage cans overflow the trash can.

My new second hobby is shopping antique stores, flea markets, yard sales, and junk places for tools and supplies. The last two cigar boxes I got were from junk dealers and the draw knife for doing guitar necks from a flea market. I call shopping going to Lowes. I hit the hardware isle at Wal Mart and even find myself in the electronic isle of Goodwill looking for amps and tube radios or old guitars to turn into resonators, or cannobalize.

I even watch the road side when driving down the road for hub caps or parts. Its obsessive.

The cost is far more than money, its time, its personal time, family time, its every waking thought, all our energy, its our every thought like time. Its worse than football, worse than sex even. Its an addiction. We'd almost steal to feed it, we'd beg, we'd have no shame, and we'd grovel with the dealer using every trick to get him or her down one more dime.

We have no shame.

It cost us our very soul, our dignity.

The cost is great, but the reward is worth it when our creation is done, when that first note rings out, the beauty shines forth, the marvel and miracle happens.

We again become a proud parent, we have created, have birthed, have brought forth, have enriched the world.

AH, is there anything like it my firend?